A lot of games have dropped in the past few weeks that have enjoyed the kind of pre-release hysteria that persuades publishers of lesser titles to consider foregoing the holiday season sales rush and launch their own offerings in the New Year. These are the kind of games that enjoy such juggernautingly, bone-crushingly, behemothanical, titanic hype that they don’t need to float a demo to meet their colossal sales estimates. So, in this curious winter garden, cast in the dark shadow of recent monoliths, I find the demo of Tropico 3, a game so good and so well marketed, that I’ve never in fact heard of it. Consequently, I had to dare myself to download it. You don’t want to know what the forfeit for not doing so was.

There must be at least five games I’d rather be playing right now that the Tropico demo, but since I do not presently enjoy gainful employment, I have to be a little more frugal in my video game expenditure. I really did expect 2009 to be the year in which I gently tanned on the rotisserie grill of Beelzebub’s own satanic barbeque, yet it would appear that even my best Faustian intentions were well and truly scuttled. Indeed, as it happens I now have plenty more time to play video games, but no means by which to acquire them. And this is a painful and cruel irony that is not lost upon me.

The intro Tropico 3 illustrates a conflict on a tropical island in 1949, and then again in 1952, and 1957, then 1961 (tourists with nuclear explosions), 1965, 1970 with industry and construction, 1973 dudes being chased by army types, 1978, very urban, some simcityesque driving about, 1982 and its dépêche mode and more tourists. Once this has played through once, it invites me to ‘press any button to rule’. This introduction has given me absolutely nothing to go on gameplay wise, and instead alludes to a foul dictatorship full of wanton debauchery, opulence and human rights violations. It is a clear nod a certain Carribean Island’s chequered history, throughout the cold war. It’s a thin veil of obscurity, which won’t fool anyone who has read a history book. It’s Cuba, okay? Let’s move on.

New game: tutorial. Why not? After all, I probably ought to know how to play it before I get stuck in. The loading screen has quotes by Robert Orben and Victor Hugo, which give me some clues as to the game’s political and comedic leanings. The tutorial tells me one thing and one thing only. This game would be easier to play with a mouse and a keyboard. And with the music turned off. And with the tutorial voice actor turned off.

Tropico as it turns out is a 3D topdown managethemup in the vein of SimCity, Ceasar, Settlers, SimCity 2000, and er, every game since that has aped SimCity in any shape or form. This is probably a good thing, because if could have back all the hours I’ve sunk into SimCity in one of its many guises, I’d have enough time to make my fortune, start and raise a family, or at least build a small wall. However, all these experiences have been on the PC. Shuffling through menus of citizen stats and telling minions to go off and build stuff has never transposed especially well to the console controller.

So I’d love to give this demo a fair crack of the whip, but I’m damned if I’m gonna sink a couple of hours into learning how to play a game with a controller that I could just pick up and play without much introduction on the PC. There’s still some mileage to be had from Civ4 instead, and the myriad expansion packs I got with the complete edition. I feel that I’ve only scraped the surface of the extra content on that one, and what about Empire Total War? Looks like I have some busy days ahead of me before I get stuck into something different.

The whole not having a job thing is weighing heavy too, since I found myself refraining from dropping a mere slice on Rolando 2 because I hadn’t in fact successfully conquered the first one. As with Tropico 3, there’s no way I’m gonna drop any cash on the full game because a) games like this suck using a controller, b) I don’t have any cash, and c) I didn’t complete the first two games. Not that jumping into a series isn’t worthwhile further down the franchise (can’t think of an appropriate example), but as time-sinks go, I’m not especially enamoured at the prospect of putting a jaunty latin spin on what essentially boils down to SimCity Cuba.